Dream  Teams      

Bridging  the  learnings  between  management  of  teams  in  business  and  sports  

     

Henrietta  Vuorenmaa        

Bachelor’s  thesis    May  2015  

         

Degree  Programme  in  International  Business  School  of  Business  

     

Description  

Author(s)  Vuorenmaa,  Henrietta    

Type  of  publication    Bachelor’s  Thesis  

Date  11.05.2015  Language  of  publication:      English  

Number  of  pages    70  

Permission  for  web  publication:  (x)  

Title  of  publication    Dream  Teams      Bridging  the  learnings  between  management  of  teams  in  business  and  sports  

Degree  programme    Degree  Programme  in  International  Business  

Tutor(s)  Saukkonen,  Juha      Assigned  by    

Abstract  

This  research  studied  the  process  of  building  high-­‐performance  teams  using  JYP-­‐Academy,  an  ice  hockey  team,  as  a  practical  example  and  reflecting  the  findings  onto  the  business  world.  Companies  are  investing  time  and  energy  into  making  teams  work  but  still  a  lot  of  them  are  under-­‐performing  business,  this  phenomenon  can  be  also  seen  in  sports.  Turning  under-­‐performing  teams  into  successful  ones  will  not  only  make  the  investment  worthwhile,  it  can  also  increase  productivity  and  therefore  possible  additional  revenue.  

The  thesis  was  completed  as  a  qualitative  study  through  focused  in-­‐person  interviews  that  took  place  in  the  Spring  of  2015.  The  interviewees  consisted  of  professionals  in  the  field  of  ice  hockey  and  a  CEO  of  a  media  company  Mainostoimisto  Media  M1  (M1).  The  interviews  were  transcribed  and  analyzed  through  tying  together  the  key  words  and  terms  from  each  interview.  JYP-­‐Academy  and  M1  were  chosen  for  the  collection  of  primary  data  due  to  their  recent  success  in  sports  and  business.  

The  results  emphasize  leadership,  communication  and  goal  setting  when  building  a  high-­‐performance  team.  The  results  also  suggest  that  high-­‐performance  can  be  maintained,  under  some  restrictions,  despite  team-­‐members  changing  during  projects.  The  same  key  concept  arose  in  both  informant  groups,  sports  and  business,  leading  to  assumption  there  is  a  common  ground  for  teamwork  development.  

This  study  is  of  value  when  looking  into  improving  teamwork  and  building  high-­‐performance  whether  it  is  in  sports  or  business.  The  thesis  also  sheds  light  on  possible  future  studies  that  could  be  realized  in  order  to  make  adaptation  easier  when  new  generations  enter  the  workforce,  for  example.  

Keywords/tags  (subjects)    Teams,  Leadership,  Sports  team,  Generation  Y  

Miscellaneous    

     

Kuvailulehti  

Tekijä(t)    Vuorenmaa,  Henrietta  

Julkaisun  laji    Opinnäytetyö  

Päivämäärä  11.05.2015  

Sivumäärä    70  

Julkaisun  kieli    Englanti  

  Verkkojulkaisulupa  myönnetty:  (x)  

Työn  nimi    Dream  Teams    Oppien  yhdistäminen  yritystiimien  ja  urheilutiimien  hallinnoinnin  välillä  

Koulutusohjelma    Degree  Programme  in  International  Business  

Työn  ohjaaja(t)    Juha  Saukkonen      Toimeksiantaja(t)        

Tiivistelmä    

Tässä  opinnäytetyössä  pyrittiin  tutkimaan  ja  vertailemaan  urheilun  ja  yritysmaailman  tiimejä,  jotka  omaavat  korkean  suorituskyvyn,  sekä  etsimään  mahdollisia  käytäntöjä  yritysmaailman  hyödynnettäviksi.  Jääkiekkojoukkue  JYP-­‐Akatemia  toimi  käytännön  esimerkkinä.  Yritykset  investoivat  resursseja  tiimityöhön,  mutta  silti  niissä  voidaan  havaita  alisuoriutumista.  Alisuoriutuvien  tiimien  kääntäminen  menestyviksi  ei  ainoastaan  tee  investoinneista  kannattavia  vaan  voi  lisätä  myös  tuottavuutta.  

Tutkimus  toteutettiin  kvalitatiivisena  tutkimuksena.  Henkilöhaastattelut  toteutettiin  keväällä  2015.  Haastateltavina  oli  jääkiekon  ammattilaisia  ja  Mainostoimisto  Media  M1:n  (M1)  toimitusjohtaja.  Haastattelut  litteroitiin  ja  yhteenveto  tehtiin  haastatteluissa  esiin  nousseiden  avainsanojen  ja  termien  avulla.  JYP-­‐Akatemia  ja  M1  valittiin  primäärin  tutkimusdatan  kohteeksi  molempien  hiljattaisen  menestyksen  vuoksi.    

Tulokset  painottavat  johtajuuden,  kommunikaation  ja  tavoitteiden  asettamisen  tärkeyttä  korkean  suorituskyvyn  omaavissa  tiimeissä.  Tulokset  osoittavat  myös  kuinka  nämä  voivat  tietyin  rajoituksin  säilyttää  suoritustasonsa  tiiminjäsenten  vaihtuessa  projektin  aikana.  Samat  avainkonseptit  nousivat  esille  molemmissa  ryhmissä,  johtaen  oletukseen  urheilulla  ja  yrityksillä  olevan  yhteiset  perusteet  tiimityöskentelyn  parantamiseksi.    

Tuloksia  voidaan  hyödyntää  sekä  tiimityötä  parannettaessa  että  huipputiimejä  rakennettaessa.  Opinnäytetyö  nostaa  esiin  myös  mahdollisia  jatkotutkimuksia,  kuten  uusien  sukupolvien  työelämään  siirtyminen.    

.  

Avainsanat  (asiasanat)    Tiimit,  Johtaminen,  Urheilujoukkue,  Sukupolvi  Y      Muut  tiedot      

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CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 3 2 OBJECTS OF RESEARCH ......................................................................... 6

2.1 JYP-Academy ........................................................................................ 6 2.2 M1 .......................................................................................................... 9

3 METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................... 11 3.1 Research Approach ............................................................................. 12 3.2 Implementation .................................................................................... 13

3.2.1 Selecting the interviewees and introductions ................................ 15 3.2.2 Performing the interviews .............................................................. 16

3.3 Analysis of the data ............................................................................. 17 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................ 18

4.1 Working groups and Teams ................................................................ 19 4.2 High-performance teams ..................................................................... 21

4.2.1 Building team performance ........................................................... 22 4.3 Team-member roles ............................................................................ 26 4.4 Team-member changes ...................................................................... 27 4.5 Goal setting ......................................................................................... 28 4.6 Motivation ............................................................................................ 29 4.7 Generation Y ....................................................................................... 30 4.8 Relevance ............................................................................................ 34

5 RESEARCH RESULTS ............................................................................. 36 5.1 What are some of the factors that can help a team grow into a high-performance team? ...................................................................................... 36 5.2 Can a high-performance team remain on its performance level even if team-members change? .............................................................................. 43 5.3 Defining a dream team ........................................................................ 46 5.4 Generation Y ....................................................................................... 47

6 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY .................................................................. 49 6.1 Reliability ............................................................................................. 51 6.2 Validity ................................................................................................. 52

7 CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................ 53 REFERENCES ................................................................................................ 59 APPENDICES ................................................................................................. 63

Appendix 1. Interview Jukka Ahvenjärvi ...................................................... 63 Appendix 2. Interview Tuomo Aartolahti ...................................................... 65 Appendix 3. Interview Member of the Organization ..................................... 67 Appendix 4. Interview Professional Ice Hockey Player ............................... 68 Appendix 5. Interview Eric Perrin ................................................................. 69 Appendix 6. Table of Mestis Players Ages .................................................. 70

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FIGURES Figure 1. JYP Jyväskylä Ltd. Organizational Map (JYP n.d) ............................. 7 Figure 2. M1 Processes (M1 n.d) .................................................................... 11 Figure 3. High Performance Team Model (DrivenforLife 2012) ...................... 22 Figure 4. Energy and Engagement against Efficiency (Pentland 2012, 70) .... 24 Figure 5. General model of goal setting theory (Lunenburg 2011) ................. 29 Figure 6. Generation Y's preferences for working in a company (Gorman 2014) ............................................................................................................... 32

TABLES Table 1. The average age of players ................................................................. 9 Table 2. Difference between a working group and a team (Katzenbach and Smith 1993) ..................................................................................................... 20

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1 INTRODUCTION

Dream Team:

”A team of people perceived as the perfect combination for a

particular purpose.” – Oxford Dictionaries (N.d.a)

If it were up to you to determine the term dream team, would you say it is a

team that has the best talent in the world but does not deliver, or a team that

functions and communicates seamlessly but are not perceived to be the best

in the world when individually evaluated? The dictionary definition could be

revised or there could be another definition alongside with it. Perfect

combination is sometimes perceived as the perfect combination of talent,

which does not necessarily guarantee the success of a team.

Here are two very different teams to give a practical example of the previous

statement:

In sports history there are two teams above all that are considered

exceptional. One of them fitting the common perception of a dream team and

is, in fact, thought of “the original dream team” (NBA n.d.a). The other team

instead was an underdog turned into a ‘Miracle’ and beat a dynasty that was

supposed to be impossible to do (IIHF n.d). Since those teams acted as part

of the inspiration for this thesis, it feels natural to introduce both of them

briefly.

The (Original) Dream Team refers to the United States first Olympic

basketball team that was allowed to include active NBA (National Basketball

Association) players. The team defeated its opponents on an average 44

points per game and is to this day considered the greatest sports team ever

assembled in history. The dream team is said to have put basketball on the

map in terms of sports and its popularity has since expanded all over the

world. The team won gold at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and the roster

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included players like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird just to

name few. (NBA n.d.b.)

The next story known as ‘Miracle on ice’ is also a story about an Olympic

team of the United States. Only this dates back to the year 1980 and the team

was not exactly set out to succeed on Olympic level. However, this game is

considered the all-time greatest moment of international ice hockey. By the

year 1980 the Soviet Union had created a dynasty, they practiced eleven

months out of the year, studied their opponents and devoted themselves

exclusively to hockey. The head coach Herb Brooks led 20 college players to

victory from a dynasty, a team that practiced and played together all year

round. After beating the Soviets, the USA team took home the Olympic gold

medal in the final game against Finland. (IIHF n.d.)

These two stories are vastly different but they both could be said to possess

the true essences of the term ‘dream team’ no matter how the dictionary

defines it. In the latter example, leadership has a big and inspirational role,

which should be noted as well.

A lot of times teams are put together in sports and corporate life and the

individuals included in them may be considered as exceptional professionals

who are the best at what they do. Problems arise when the teams do not

deliver to what is expected of them and they do not really understand why.

The phenomenon of under-performing teams, which this research was

inspired by, is tied into mere personal observations through different media

throughout the years. The issue has been notably present also in the

academic world through projects where groups should have performed as

teams and either failed to do so or under-performed as a whole. Same

obstacle can be seen in sports: a big number of teams under-perform but

sometimes there is a black sheep present in the form of a team who was not

supposed to do well but performs to their full potential (The IIHF n.d).

Organizations and companies make investments into players or employees

who are supposedly good and when the team has been somewhat put

together on paper, it may look like one has a dream team in front of him or

5

her. Reality is often vastly different and no matter how talented and awarded

the players or employees are, it might be that the team or new employee

simply does not deliver when it is show time (Hagger & Chatzisarantis 2005,

163). It may simply be because the new employee, for example, prefers

individual work and effort and so the company uses resources on teams and

the return on investment (ROI) is not exactly the desired. It may be that the

players’ and employees’ characters do not suit well together with colleagues

or even with the coach’s or manager’s coaching and management style. Also,

a lot of times Human Resources (HR) focus on improving and recognizing

individual talent rather than that of teams. (Coutu 2009; Hedges 2014.)

It was determined to emphasise more on a sports team as a practical

example. This due to the fact that the comparison of the secondary data on

teams and the first interview conducted made it evident that sports teams lean

towards naturally possessing characteristics of high-performance teams.

As found in the primary data, sports possess a strong element from the

business world in terms of player contracts for example. In turn, with

companies now investing more and more time into improving teamwork and

demanding more from it (Hedges 2014), this would be a fine time to look into

sports for guidance on which of their strong points to bring across in order to

build high-performance teams. Due to the previous, it felt appropriate to

include a company in this research as a case to reflect on.

‘Dream Team’ will be examined as a concept and term later on. In practice,

we can talk about high-performance teams and the relation of these two terms

will be later explained as well.

All in all, this thesis is set out to shed light on to what businesses could learn

from a sports team when building teams and how sports teams could be of

benefit for businesses now and in the future in terms of learning about the

future generations. The research objectives are to investigate what some of

those characteristics are that enable a team to be a high-performance team

and to learn what people involved in sports, in ice hockey to be exact, have to

say and how they define a dream team.

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The research questions are set out to examine two entities: First one is team

building and the second one has to do with the effects of team-member

changes. Companies rarely face team-member changes as rapidly and

dramatically as a sports teams might but sick leaves, maternity leaves,

employees resigning and layoffs are part of corporate world, it seems logical

to see if high-performance could be maintained even with rapid changes.

The research questions are the following:

1. What are some of the factors that can help a team grow into a

high-performance team?

2. Can a high-performance team remain on its performance level

even if team-members change?

2 OBJECTS OF RESEARCH

There were two objects of the research from which practical examples and

qualitative data were drawn. These include an ice hockey team form the

second tier hockey league in Finland and a media company that has to put

together teams for projects on regular basis.

Ice hockey is the most popular sport in Finland with 190 000 active amateur

players and there are teams for children before they even enter elementary

school. (Suomen Jääkiekkoliitto 2015.) Leadership and teamwork skills are

practiced throughout the playing years and as these individuals later move on

to academic world and work life, they have a set of crucial skills ingrained to

them from a very young age on. An interesting observation could be done

when looking at the ages of the players since nearly all of them are members

of Generation Y. See Table 1.

2.1 JYP-Academy

JYP-Academy is a part of the JYP-organization (JYP n.d) and functions as a

so-called farm team and is obligated to provide players when needed to

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the first official ice hockey league team JYP until a certain point during the

season. In other words, JYP can inform the coach of JYP-Academy that they

need a player for that night’s game and sometimes this can happen with a

five-minute warning (Ahvenjärvi 2015).

JYP-Academy plays in the ice hockey league called Mestis, which is the

second highest competitive league in Finland founded in the year 2000.

During the season 2014-2015, there were ten teams competing in the league.

Mestis (n.d.) The following organizational map (Figure 1) can be referred to for

clearer view on the JYP organization. Organization can be defined as

a social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a

need or to pursue collective goals (BusinessDictonary n.d).

JYP-Academy is owned by JYP Jyväskylä Ltd., under which also function

JYP, the Liiga team, and JYP A-Juniors that play in the highest junior ice

hockey league in Finland. JYP Juniors do not function under the company but

in close contact with the organization bearing the same name. (JYP n.d.)

Figure 1. JYP Jyväskylä Ltd. Organizational Map (JYP n.d)

JYP  Jyväskylä  Ltd.  

JYP  A-­‐Juniors   JYP   JYP-­‐

Academy  

JYP  Juniors  

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The decision to choose this particular ice hockey team was merely based on

findings that could be discovered by anyone (e.g. league standings, players)

before contacting any parties for further research. At the home games of the

team, there are game programs in the form of leaflets that list out the line-ups

of the night and other brief information. Those leaflets, at least the ones at

JYP-Academy’s games, inform the reader about the ages of the players as

well. For that reason it became quite clear that this specific team was playing

with a very young team so to say. At the time of these findings, JYP-Academy

was at the fourth place on the league standings and after some research done

on the players’ ages of the other teams playing in the same league, it became

quite clear that JYP-Academy was, if not the youngest, among the youngest

teams in Mestis (Mestis n.d). See Table 1 below.

The exceptional performance was to be defined by the researcher and based

on a personal opinion, and common logic, fourth place in the league standings

when the players’ average age is 22, when some of the teams have an

average age of four to five years higher, was exceptional. Refer to Table 1

below for comparison of the ages of six teams competing in the same league,

one of which being JYP-Academy. The information for the table was drawn

from the websites of the teams in question. Not all of Mestis teams were

included due to practical reasons and the ones listed were the top 6 at the end

of the season 2014-2015 (SJLTilastot 2015). Any possible inaccurate

information featured on the table is due to inaccuracies on teams’ websites.

Now, age does not necessarily determine on what level the team should

perform, so to say, but these players are players that most of them are only

starting their careers when other teams have players that have a lot more

experience some even experience from playing in higher leagues (Mestis n.d).

That being said, it is justified to state that the team being studied was

performing on an exceptional level during the season 2014-2015. This

particular season the team made it all the way to the playoffs, which was a

first time in JYP-Academy’s history (JYP-Akatemia n.d.).

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Table 1. The average age of players

2.2 M1

Mainostoimisto M1 (M1) is an advertising agency dating back to the 1970s

and was founded in 1990 (LinkedIn n.d). There have been a few name

changes and the name Mainostoimisto M1 was introduced in the year 2001

(Mainostoimisto Media M1 n.d).

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The company employs 30 people and is located both in Jyväskylä and

Helsinki. They offer

digital and print marketing solutions for customers who want

to gain focused, qualified and cost effective marketing

operations. Mainostoimisto M1 is specialized in visual design

(print and digital), brand management, marketing strategies,

online marketing, social media, television production and

inhouse production. (LinkedIn n.d.)

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tuomo Aartolahti told that teams are

specifically formed according to every project assigned by the clients

according to the projects’ characteristics and goals. Logically, the reason for

choosing M1 to be the corporate side to research was the strong presence of

team-atmosphere and the constantly changing environment of projects for

which teams have to be reassembled.

Refer to Figure 2. for M1’s processes. Translations are as follows: (1.) M1

processes; (2.) Situation Analysis; (3.) Objectives; (4.) Implementation and (5.)

Results – Further development. (M1 n.d.)

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Figure 2. M1 Processes (M1 n.d)

3 METHODOLOGY

According to Jorma Kananen (2011, 11)

Methodology refers to all the methods that are used in research.

The main division is based on qualitative and quantitative

research, each of which applies methods that suit certain

research situations/research phenomena. The methods are

needed at the data collection, analysis and interpretation stages

of the work. The choice of methods should be justified.

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3.1 Research Approach

Inductive approach was chosen due to the nature of the research. There was

a need to understand the context and gain perspective, which could only be

done when the participants have a chance to bring out viewpoints vastly by

talking and therefore, deductive approach where quantitative data would be

collected, was out of the question. (Saunders 2009.)

Qualitative methods display and, in our view, should boast,

obvious strengths. They help us understand and explain human

meanings, and the dimensions of social life. (Young & Atkinson

2012.)

When selecting the qualitative approach on gathering primary data, it was

quite clear the participant should have a way to express himself freely and as

effortlessly as possible with bringing in as much information as they wanted.

Questionnaire with open-ended questions was considered but rejected fast

due to it being very difficult to design so that it would provide the necessary

information. (Saunders 2009.) Due to personal experience, it has been noted

that respondents are fairly inactive when asked to fill out questionnaires where

they have to write more than couple of words. The best way therefore was to

conduct focused semi-structured in-person interviews to be able to have a

more conversational feel to them (Saunders 2009). This was also made clear

to the participants before starting the interviews. The non-dichotomous

questions were put in order by categories and so the bigger entities were

created already in the design-phase of the research and the interview

structured so that the data would be easy to analyze (Kananen 2011, 55).

When talking about teams, it is always easier if there is a specific team one

can talk about. The object of the research had to fit into the theme, which

meant that not every team would be eligible. It had to be a team that is

performing exceptionally well and finding one, had to be done by searching

online through sports leagues in Finland and seeing if anything stood out.

Now, to determine which team is performing exceptionally well was a

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complicated process because one has to understand or determine what

“exceptionally well” means. However, the main focus was on sports teams due

to the results being very public and reliable. If there is a team that is reported

to have scored 100 goals in whole during a certain period of time, you can

trust that it is true.

3.2 Implementation

Data collection

The primary data was collected through semi-structured focused in-person

interviews where the participants were asked predetermined questions but

given the possibility to add something they felt was important. The questions

were somewhat organized by categories and therefore, the interview followed

a certain pattern with the laid-out questions. Every question was not asked

and some questions were followed by statements or follow-up questions that

were not pre-determined. Prior to interviews, the participants were contacted

via e-mail, mobile phone and by face-to-face contact in order to ask about

their interest in being part of the study. (Saunders 2009.)

Secondary data was collected before and after interviews by searching

through interesting themes, using keywords that were thought important and

later after interviews, the keywords that arose from those were used in order

to find necessary and relevant theory base to see if statements could be

backed up.

Collection of the primary and secondary data happened from January to April

of 2015. A lot of which was conducted through a desktop research (theoretical

framework), keeping an eye on newspapers and team statistics and by

attending JYP-Academy home games at Synergia-Areena. The interviews

were conducted between March and April of 2015.

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“Physical” collection of the primary data

The interviews were conducted where participants were easy to reach and

where they felt the most comfortable being interviewed. Every space was an

office type of setting with few chances of interruptions. The questions asked

were based on the literature and themes that were considered important but

also over all type of questions were included in order to gain perspective of

the person and the field in question (Kananen 2011. 54). For example, when

interviewing the head coach of the ice hockey team, general questions about

his background and how a hockey team is built in practice were made to start

the focused interview off with a more general approach before getting to the

details.

Ethics

During data collection face-to-face interviews, even with

managers, will place you in a position of some ‘power’, albeit for a

short time, because you will be able to formulate questions,

including probing ones, which may cause discomfort or even

stress (Saunders 2009, 187).

From an ethical point of view, the parties were let to know that the thesis could

be published confidentially so that any delicate information does not go flying

around and permission for recording the interviews was asked from each

participant. The questions asked were set to be as ethically correct as

possible without putting any of the interviewees in an awkward position

(Saunders 2009). Questions asked were not made in order to lead the

interviewee on or to get a specific kind of answers and the only time yes or no

type of answers were asked happened when clarifying if the interviewer had

understood the answer correctly. (Smith 2013.)

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3.2.1 Selecting the interviewees and introductions

The selection of the participants happened through observing the current

situation of the time of selection of the participants and planning of the thesis.

JYP-Academy was chosen because of their exceptional performance and it

felt natural to choose an interviewee who was the team leader and who could

answer big number of questions within the field of ice hockey, about teams in

general and about the specific team in question. The head coach, Jukka

Ahvenjärvi, was contacted and asked whether or not he would be interested in

doing an interview. The time of the interview happened to be during the

playoffs so the interviewee was noticeably stressed out but was not hurrying

when answering the questions and was very thorough with all of them. Some

prior research was done on the participant before contacting him in order to

determine if he would be a good fit for the study. JYP-Academy was the first

object of interest in terms of this research and the head coach of the team the

first person that was asked to participate.

After the positive response from the head coach of the team, other

participants, two of them kept anonymous, were considered. The second

interviewee in terms of JYP-Academy is someone who has experience from

working in the JYP organization for years and has first hand experience on

how the players were treated and what was going on in the team. This

particular participant was interesting due to the close contact with the previous

years’ teams and the vast knowledge in the field and the ability to vocalize the

information without being currently tied into or under obligations by the

organization anyhow.

The third participant is a professional hockey player with some knowledge

about the organization as well. The need for this participant arose from

realizing the fact that the sports team in question was a very young team so

the perspective of a relatively young player was necessary also. However, this

person was asked very specific questions due to the method of contact and

therefore the material is a lot narrower than from the other interviews and

generally focused on teams rather than JYP-Academy.

16

The fourth interview in terms of the hockey side of the research was the last

one to be conducted but the participant was one of the first ones to be

considered. The interviewee in question is a professional ice hockey player,

Eric Perrin, who has already played numerous years on an international level.

He was the captain of JYP for three years and therefore also familiar with the

organization. Both professional athletes were told that they could answer the

questions from their general point of view and not to be tied into the

organization. The reason for reaching out to players from the JYP-

organization was merely to make it easier to possibly ask specific questions

and know that they had the quiet knowledge about the organization that did

not have to be explained to them, for example how JYP and JYP-Academy

are linked to each other. This participant was important for the vast knowledge

he has acquired and also for the responsible role he has had while playing for

JYP.

The interview conducted with the company M1, was to gain perspective and to

help in understanding some major differences between corporate team

building and team building in terms of sports. Also, to help build understanding

on the similarities that occur between the two fields and since the theory

section relies a lot on companies’ point of view, it felt natural to have a similar

point of view in practice. The participant is the CEO, Tuomo Aartolahti, of the

M1-company and therefore a great fit for the research interview.

3.2.2 Performing the interviews

First one (Ahvenjärvi) was done at Synergia-Areena, the main hockey rink of

Jyväskylä, Finland. The space was a small office next to an empty locker

room so there was no issue with noise.

The second one (Aartolahti) was conducted at M1 offices in the General

Manager’s office room, background music is be noticeable from the audio

recordings but not to the extent of it being disruptive to the clarity of the audio

from the interview.

17

Third interview was conducted at interviewee’s home and there were no

distractions of any kind. Fourth interview was conducted via mobile phone.

The interviewee was sent the questions beforehand and he then recorded

himself answering to them. The recordings were clear and the choice of place

and time was of participant’s own choice. In case clarification is needed, the

fourth interview was the only one not conducted as an in-person interview.

Fifth and, at the same time, the last interview (Perrin) was conducted at an

event held at the main hockey rink’s (Synergia Areena) restaurant (Ravintola

Hurrikaani). The event was no distraction to the interview as the recording of it

happened in a conference room where the music was not distracting. There

were no distractions other than a few phone calls that the interviewee received

during the interview.

Each interview included the interviewer and the interviewee, except for the

one conducted from distant via electronic devices. All interviews were

conducted in Finnish except for the one with Perrin that was done in English.

All the participants were explained the structure of the interview and told that

the questions served as a guideline. Permission for recording was also asked

and granted for each of the interviews. There were neither failed attempts in

terms of contacting the people nor refusals once getting through to them.

Everyone was on board right away and no further convincing was necessary.

3.3 Analysis of the data

The audio material was transcribed quite loosely in terms of accuracy and we

could say a propositional level of transcribing was used in order to get the key

messages recorded by transcriptions (Kananen 2011, 56-57). The interview

questions were already organized into categories, which made it easier to do

the same with the answers even when the level of accuracy was propositional;

in fact, this was definitely the easiest and clearest way to interpret the data

(Saunders 2009). One of the interviews was started out as word-for-word

transcription but halfway through the interview it became quite obvious that

18

this type of accuracy would make analysing the data only more complicated.

Transcribing happened by using multiple key words for each answer of the

respondent, which made it possible to tie questions and themes together that

otherwise were, so to say, far apart. From the key words, it was possible to

make mind-maps that helped in tying entities together and helped ultimately to

combine and compare the answers from the sports team’s coach and from the

media company’s CEO.

4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Reviewing the literature is important because it constitutes an important

chapter in the thesis because it creates and adds to the credibility of the

academic piece of work. The theoretical framework will help in identifying

other possible research in progress and to organize one's ideas and

findings. Also it helps one to be able to come up with new research ideas and

to develop critical perspective. (Saunders 2009.) Reviewing the literature

allows you to test the existing theories on the specific organization or

environment. Or if there are no existing researches or theories, it allows you to

come up with a pre theory. You will also be able to build up the existing

amount of knowledge on the matter. (Rowe 2014.)

The theoretical framework was decided to build on team-building, emphasis

on high-performance teams, motivation of the individuals and how that

transfers into the team and the effects of team-member changes within the

teams. This is logically due to the objectives and research questions at hand

and the previous were considered to build the best base for the research. Also

Generation Y was looked into due to the ice hockey team JYP-Academy

consisting only of players that age.

The theoretical framework is leaning towards corporate world with sports kept

in mind throughout the revision of the literature. Practical examples drawn

from interviews are heavily influenced by sports perspective although

business related examples are included as well in the from of reflection. The

poor performance by great talents does not affect either or, it is a

19

phenomenon that can be seen both in sports and in corporate world and

therefore both are included. Furthermore, sports and business go hand in

hand and that can be understood as one of the reasons to not leave either of

the sides out.

4.1 Working groups and Teams

Many often misunderstand the concept of a team and especially when trying

to improve the performance of a particular team, one has to truly understand

what the concept actually means. (Katzenbach, Smith 1993.) Oxford

Dictionaries (n.d.b) define a team as “a group of people who work together at

a particular job.” Instead, Katzenbach and Smith (1993), who emphasize the

importance of understanding the actual definition, define team as

"a small number of people with complementary skills who are

committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and

approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."

These two definitions are vastly different and it can be very crucial to the level

of performance if a manager fails to commit to the right idea of a team. They

distinguished a working group that was explained to have a strong clearly

focused leader, individual accountability, a purpose that is the same as the

broader organizational mission, individual work products and an efficient way

of running meetings. The working group measures its effectiveness by its

influence on others (such as financial performance on the business) and the

group discusses, decides and delegates. Then again, a team was described

to have shared leadership roles, not a one focused leader; a team possesses

individual and mutual accountability; has a specific team purpose that the

team itself delivers; collective work products, that being defined as “what two

or more members must work on together”, and a team encourages open-

ended discussions and active problem-solving meetings for example when

talking about the performance goals of the team. A team also measures

performance directly by assessing collective work products and it discusses,

decides and does real work together. Refer to Table 2 Difference between a

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working group and a team below to a clearer setting of the confrontation of the

differences of a working group and a team. (Katzenbach, Smith 1993.)

Table 2. Difference between a working group and a team (Katzenbach and Smith 1993)

Interestingly enough, the working group presented like this could be thought to

be a team by many. The biggest difference indeed appears to be the strong

sense of collectiveness when defining a team especially when talked about

the accountability, work products and assessment. The above-presented

Table 2 helps in understanding why teams may never reach their full potential

for efforts being concentrated on individual basis and the shared leadership

for example ignored. As the authors stated:

“People use the word "team" so loosely that it gets in the way of

learning and applying the discipline that leads to good

performance.” (Katzenbach, Smith 1993.)

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Katzenbach and Smith (1993) describe the essence being the common

commitment, with which a group of people can be turned into a powerful unit

of collective performance.

4.2 High-performance teams

Jamey French (n.d) defined a high-performance team to be

A self-managing, multifunctional group of people organized around a

whole process and empowered with full responsibility for their success.

In accordance to this, Harkins (2014) briefly described high-performing teams

to never lose sight of their goals, to be largely self-sustaining and to take on a

life of their own so to say.

In every case that has been studied at the Europe-based Centre

for Organizational Research, teams that 'click' always have a

leader who creates the environment and establishes the operating

principles and values that are conducive to high performance.

He (Harkins 2014) listed the four most significant behaviors consistently

demonstrated by high-impact leaders to be:

• Defining clear goals or a vision of the future in accordance with overall organizational aims (the “big picture”)

• Creating blueprints for action to achieve those goals

• Using language to build trust, encourage forward thinking and create energy within the team (“powerful conversations”)

• Getting the right people involved (“passionate champions”)

Driven for Life (2012) illustrates building of high-performance teams as a

simple pyramid of building blocks. They also base everything on leadership

and use the word authentic in order to bring across a message of a strong

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knowledgeable leader. Next up is building trust, and through establishing that

the next step to communication can be taken. When team communicates

efficiently, it is possible to move towards to role alignment and finally have the

team perform as in the form of execution. Refer to Figure 3. for the high-

performance team model pyramid. (DrivenforLife 2012.)

Figure 3. High Performance Team Model (DrivenforLife 2012)

The above described is a very simplified way into building a high-performance

team and if it was that simple, the phenomenon of under-performing teams

would not exist. The following sub-chapter digs deeper into what is required

from teams and management to establish high-performance.

4.2.1 Building team performance

According to Harvard Management Update (2006), to make a successful team

there should be a clear set of objectives, spelled out unambiguously by

management. Fairly accurate but if aimed to make the team as successful as

possible, referring to Katzenbach and Smith (1993), teams should be given

enough flexibility to shape the purposes to promote collective commitment and

flexibility to create a set of specific goals, timing, and approach. Team

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members should be convinced of the team having an urgent purpose that is

worthwhile. The more urgent and meaningful the purpose, the more likely the

team is to perform to its full potential. (Katzenbach and Smith 1993.) Harvard

Management Update (2006) advised similar to previous but also reminded

that managers may need to be a bit cautious and start slowly and give time to

the expansion of teams’ scope of authority.

There should be performance goals set throughout the way onto the bigger

goal (Katzenbach and Smith 1993) and they should be measurable so that it

can be assessed whether or not those goals are met (Harvard Management

Update 2006). Communication is highly emphasised by many sources and for

example Pentland (2012, 62) stated that patterns of communication were the

most important factor when predicting a team’s potential success. According

to data collected team’s energy and engagement outside formal meetings

were the best predictors of teams productivity. When informal communication

increased in the form of coffee breaks being scheduled at the same time for

team members, it resulted to a notable 20% decrease in call center average

handling time for the lower performing teams while the overall average

decreased as well. Due to this, the manager of the bank’s call center could

forecast 15 million USD in productivity increases per year. The customer

satisfaction was noted to have benefitted from the communicational changes

within teams as well. The figure 4 below, illustrates the described

phenomenon. The percentage demonstrated on the figure, represents the

overall improvement within the teams. Points A and B on Figure 4 are equally

efficient but due to different combinations of energy and engagement, blue

stands for high efficiency and red for low. (Pentland 2012, 70.) Katzenbach

and Smith (1993) show similar opinions and talk about team having to be in

contact formally and informally a lot especially in the beginning in order to

learn to be a team.

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Figure 4. Energy and Engagement against Efficiency (Pentland 2012, 70)

Harvard Management Update (2006) states there has to be ongoing training in

communication, group leadership and other team skills and the training for

those should not be performed as day-long trainings. There should be an

open culture established and access to team-specific information and to

senior management should be easy. When it comes to rewards, teams should

be rewarded and evaluated as whole without individual incentives. (Harvard

Management Update 2006.)

Since teams are thought to rise and fall on leadership, in addition to previous,

behaviors consistently demonstrated by high-impact leaders are summarized

briefly in the following.

High-performance leaders create a clear vision team-members can discuss.

Members have to understand it to the extent where there can be a genuine

expression of thoughts, feelings, expectations or even fears can be realized.

The leader will keep the conversation on track and relevant to the big picture.

Having accomplished conversation and mutual understanding on the matter,

the team creates a realistic agenda that the leader will assess and later

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discuss with the team-members. This way obstacles and any hidden agendas

can be brought to surface. Future outcomes will be linked to the current

situation. By going through the stages of defining clear goals, creating

blueprints, building trust energy within the team and getting the right people

involved, the commitments will be clear an accepted and the process allows

the team to form into a high-performance team. (Harkins 2014.)

Presented in a study by Hagger and Chatzisarantis (2005) Carron and

Hausenblas’ (1998) model (see Figure 5 below) outlines the major influences

on group structure and formation, processes and outcomes. Group structure

builds upon the norms and the roles within the team. The group structure

influences team goals, collective efficacy, and cooperation within the group, in

other words group processes. A proposed mediator between group structure

and group processes is cohesion, which can be also described as the degree

to which group acts in unison when pursuing collective goals.

Cohesion is considered to be an extremely important social

psychological construct in the group dynamics in sport because it

has a pervasive effect on a number of interpersonal variables at

the group processes stage such as collective efficacy,

cooperation, effort, and motivation. These group processes affect

individual and personal outcomes such as performance and

outcomes. (Hagger and Chatzisarantis 2005.)

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Figure 5. Carron and Hausenblas’ (1998) conceptual framework for the study of sport teams (Hagger and Chatzisarantis 2005)

4.3 Team-member roles

This section felt like a necessary addition to the theory due to the data

collected and analyzed from the interviews. There were a lot of emphasis on

role clarity and acceptance in the answers especially by Ahvenjärvi and

Perrin. They saw these to be crucial parts of a team being able to function and

to deliver. We are focused on formal roles, in other words roles that have been

assigned to individuals (Hagger & Chatzisarantis 2005). In short, when talking

about roles, there can be three components identified: Role Clarity,

understanding your role; Role Acceptance, accepting your role and Role

Performance, having the ability to fulfill your role (Gentner 2010). These

classifications are used more in the field of Sport Psychology rather than

business but are applicable to both.

Role clarity is vital in a sports team. The player has to know what is expected

of them in terms of roles, the teammates need to understand each other’s

roles and have to be certain about their own individual roles in relation to the

team. They have to be able to explain their own roles. If role clarity is not

accomplished, important work does not get done because no one feels

responsible for it. (Bray 2002.)

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According to Benson et al. (2013) role acceptance,

refers to the initial and ongoing cognitive evaluation of an

assigned role. It is proposed that role acceptance can be defined

as a dynamic process that reflects the degree to which an athlete

is willing to fulfill the role responsibilities expected of him/her.

Role performance, having the ability to fulfill your role, is not exactly used as

a term or spoken about in the interviews conducted but it should be

understood that role performance is the third necessary, and also crucial,

component when spoken about roles, both in sports and business teams

(Gentner 2010). Even though a team member can develop new skills while

functioning in a team, there has to be an ability to fulfill the certain activity

assigned. One would not ask a lawyer to perform a surgery on a patient

unless they were capable to do so. Katzenbach and Smith (1993) state that

since a team cannot succeed without all the skills needed to meet its purpose

and performance goals, a wise manager would choose people for their

existing skills and their potential to improve existing skills and learn new ones.

4.4 Team-member changes

One of the most common types of change in teams is the team-member

changing. Flux, an unstable, unbalanced, or changing pattern of interaction in

a collective, has been introduced as a way to measure the degree to which

change or change events affect individuals and teams.

Member change causes high levels of flux in coordination when a

member changes to a more strategically core role, or there is low

information transfer during the change. (Summers et al. 2012.)

Summers et al. (2012), referring to Georgopoulos and Mann (1962), describe

coordination as a pattern of set routines that represent the degree of

functional expression and those routines are existent even after change.

However, these types of coordination behaviors are likely to be less efficiently

performed after the disruption (change or non-routine events followed by

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periods of rapid activity). Strategic core role is central to the teamwork flow. It

encounters more of the problems that need to be overcome in a team and has

a greater exposure to the tasks that the team is performing and when a

member holding that role changes, it results in higher levels of flux in

coordination. (Summers et al. 2012.)

According to Cheng (1983 and 1984), flux in coordination has an impact on

team’s ability to accomplish well-coordinated activities because the efforts can

be fragmented, duplicated or when it comes to individual activities, illogically

organized. Therefore, a great variation in flux causes a loss in energy and

time as more attention has to be paid on how to re-organize in order to

continue forward. All in all, even though it sometimes provides an opportunity

to re-evaluate team practices and behaviour patterns, increases in flux have a

negative effect on performance. (Summers et al. 2012.)

4.5 Goal setting

As also the previous chapter revealed, goal setting has been realized to be a

crucial part when it comes to motivation of individuals, groups and teams

(Lunenburg 2011) and therefore it seems appropriate to look mote into it.

Lunenburg (2011) re-introduces a general model of goal setting theory (see

the Figure 6 below) by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham (1990). The figure

explains the theory in a simplified way. Values and intentions (goals) are

thought to be the two determinants of behaviour and a goal is defined by what

an individual is consciously trying to do. (Lunenburg 2011.) Lunenburg (2011)

refers to Locke and Latham by stating that goals direct attention and action

due to them affecting job performance. This is in accordance with Katzenbach

and Smith (1993) who spoke about the necessity of setting performance goals

for a team to stay committed. Goals motivate people and accomplishing the

goal can lead to satisfaction and further motivation, or if the goal is not

accomplished, it can create frustration and lower motivation. (Lunenburg

2011.)

29

Figure 6. General model of goal setting theory (Lunenburg 2011)

Lunenburg (2011) suggests that goals need to be specific, difficult but

attainable, accepted and feedback must be provided on goal attainment.

Goals are believed to be more effective when they are used to evaluate

performance. Orientation to learning goals leads to higher performance than a

performance goal orientation although, learning goals will not necessarily

enhance the team performance but may keep the individual more motivated

and engaged. Deadlines improve the effectiveness of goals and group goal

setting is seen just as important as individual goal setting. (Lunenburg 2011.)

4.6 Motivation

Oxford Dictionaries (n.d.c) defines motivation to be “the reason why

somebody does something or behaves in a particular way.” An academic way

of saying this would be that motivation refers to forces acting on or within an

individual to direct behavior (Gibson et. Al 2006; Ling Lim 2012). When

understanding what motivation is, it is pretty logical to think it is highly

important in whatever activity one engages in, sports or business. This

chapter aims to explain intrinsic and extrinsic motivation due to them being

present at the interviews as well. Intrinsic motivation is a type of motivation

that arises from within, the internal desire, and with which an activity engaged

in becomes personally rewarding. The individual does not need to be

30

rewarded by another party for doing an activity. A good example would be to

go for a morning run just because it makes you feel good. Extrinsic motivation is the opposite; the motivation is coming from the outside so

engaging in the activity promises external reward or it is done in order to avoid

a punishment. An example of this would be an athlete taking part in a

competition to win a scholarship. (Cherry n.d..)

Extrinsic factors are not considered to be the motivation for a person to do his

job, but their absence would result in dissatisfaction. The presence of intrinsic

factors increase motivation but their absence may not necessarily result in

dissatisfaction. Intrinsic factors include feelings of achievement, responsibility,

and recognition. The assumption is that extrinsic factors must be present to

ensure that the employee is not dissatisfied before intrinsic motivators can be

used to stimulate and enhance performance. (Ling Lim 2012.)

4.7 Generation Y

Referring Manneheim (1952), Ryder (1965) and Kupperschmidt (2000) Guillot-

Soulez and Soulez (2014) explain that individuals of each generation are

influenced by the political, economic or cultural context in which they evolve

and the historic events that shape their values. This leading to development of

unique set of beliefs and attitudes that guide and form unique patterns of

behaviour for each generation. Guillot-Soulez and Soulez (2014) give an

example of Generation Y sharing events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the

9/11 terrorist attacks and the omnipresence of technology in their world

(calling them “digital natives”).

In their article examining values and lifestyle segments of Generation Y,

Valentine and Powers (2013) state that

Members of Generation Y have been described as individualistic, well-

educated, technologically savvy, sophisticated, mature, and structured

(Syrett and Lammiman, 2003). They are group-oriented and consider

31

themselves to be “cool”, with a strong sense of identity (Pesquera, 2005;

Peterson, 2004).

Members of this generation described above are considered to be people born

after the year 1979. (Valentine & Powers 2013.) Due to this, JYP-Academy

fully consists of players from Generation Y, which made a theory section

dealing with that specific generation relevant. Also, most of the first league

players in JYP are of Generation Y. When it comes to M1, majority of the

employees belong to two generations and the employees are between the

ages of 30 and 45. Some outliers, so to say, exist and there are employees

who are in their 20s and 50s.

Gorman (2014) discusses the negative perceptions of young workers and their

unpreparedness for work life. In her article Gorman (2014) referred to a study

done by Bentley University and KRC Research (2014) when she explains that

51% of the professionals who had participated in the research stated that

there tends to be a lack of proper training for young workers due to the fear of

them being present in the company only for a short period of time. Whereas

the study conducted by Guillot-Soulez and Soulez (2014), explained that

Generation Y (also known as ‘Millenials’) prefers job security above all, in

other words, they appreciate and desire permanent contracts. Generation Y’s

work ethics and ambition has been questioned and those have acted as

judgments and misinformed reasoning for the Millenials lack of preparedness

to enter the workforce. When in fact, that exact generation is faced with vastly

different challenges than earlier generations. Blame should be shifted to

several parties and companies are hoped to step up and view the problem of

unprepared new workforce from a different angle and start delivering training

programs. (Gorman 2014.)

In another article where Gorman (2014) discusses defying assumptions

related to Generation Y. She reveals some results of a survey and describes

what Millenials’ value in their work place and what inspires them to stay in a

company for a long period of time. (See Figure 7 for some interesting facts on

the matter) This is something the companies could learn from in order to step

32

up their game and possibly gain advantage from being able to get the young

workforce to not change companies they work for. After all, this appeared to

be one of their biggest concerns and reasons to not invest in young

employees’ development. (Gorman 2014.) EY (2015) released a study in May

according to which, the top five reasons for millennials to quite their jobs are:

minimal wage growth, lack of opportunity to advance, excessive

overtime hours, a work environment that does not encourage

teamwork and a boss that doesn’t allow you to work flexibly.

Millenials want and need flexibility due to expectations and responsibilities

growing both in work life and in their families. Generation Y employees are

surveyed to fill manager positions between the age 25-29, that being the time

for many to also become parents for the first time.

They (men) are also more willing to give up a promotion, move

their families to another location to better accommodate

work/family, move closer to extended family members, and take a

pay cut to gain flexibility. (Fondas 2015.)

Figure 7. Generation Y's preferences for working in a company (Gorman 2014)

33

An element tying business and work together on this matter is that both

managers and coaches are faced with the Generation Y (Gen Y) being more

present every year as new players step in to fill in the retirees and new

graduates enter the work life. In 2020, 80 million millenials are estimated to

make up for 50% of the employee population (Pollak 2015). In her publication,

also Pollak (2015) emphasised the importance to offer training and create

mentorships. She stressed to invest in leadership succession plans due to the

fact that 73% of millenials aspire to be leaders in the next five years.

Sports are a step ahead with the generation change due to an athlete’s active

career not being as long as person’s career in corporate world (athletes also

tend to start their active careers a long before before they hit their twenties).

Gen Y has already replaced an enormous amount of Generation X

professionals and therefore coaches have to be aware of how to motivate and

keep an athlete engaged. In addition to the earlier mentioned characteristics

as athletes, Gen Y talents are independent thinkers and have had a lot of

responsibility given to them. This may result in that they do not like to be told

what to do by authority figures. They love variety in environment and are

comfortable with change and might get bored with slow paced surroundings.

These athletes expect fast results and want to be coached and treated as

individuals even though they work very well in teams. Gen Y individuals like to

make a positive contribution to others and nothing is only about money and

success for them. (Hanson 2015.) Kelvin Giles (2007) agrees that Gen Y

athletes are outcome-focused and they need to know the reasons behind what

they do in their training, especially about the parts they find uncomfortable or

inconvenient.

To give an example, the average age of National Hockey League (NHL)

players during season 2014-2015 was 27,8. This means the players were

born average in 1987. NHL is considered the toughest league in ice hockey

(Metter 2012). In turn, Finland’s number one professional league’s (Liiga,

previously SM-Liiga) oldest team had the average age of 29 in the season

2014-2015 (Pienimaa 2014). Furthermore, there is a great number of players

who are not even 20-year-olds yet (Liiga n.d.).

34

4.8 Relevance

Here we intend to summarize and highlight the most relevant parts of the

theory in terms of the research for both to sports teams and business teams.

Katzenbach and Smith (1993) spoke about the loose use of the word “team”

getting in a way of applying the discipline that leads into good performance.

They stressed the differences between working groups and teams and a big

factor distinguishing these two is the common commitment team-members

share. This type of commitment has the team work in unison and collectively

towards a set goal. The objectives have to be clearly set by the management

but the team has to have power to frame the goal so that it becomes

meaningful for it. High value is put on performance goals and their contribution

into getting to the bigger long-term goal. (Katzenbach and Smith 1993.)

Lunenburg (2011) says goals are believed to be more effective when they are

used to evaluate performance and feedback must be provided on them.

Everyone needs to understand the long-term goal so they can

know how they’re contributing, how they’re making an impact

(Georgius 2013).

Pentland (2012, 62) talked about patterns of communication and how they are

the most important factor when predicting success of a team. His examples

brought out the excessive productivity increases that can be accomplished

solely by improving the patterns of communication within team-members.

Harvard Management Update (2006) referred to the importance of

communication as well as that of an ongoing training and open culture within

the corporation. Georgius (2013) states that one out of five projects is

unsuccessful due to ineffective communications and continued by giving a

shocking number of 75 million USD that ineffective communication puts at

risk. For sports teams, communication can act as one of the key elements

especially when line-ups change and any arising issue has to be talked out.

For any business team, the amount of financial resources at stake for bad

communication should be a motivator to look into it and makes it highly

relevant for any research done on corporate teams.

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Leadership is another vital component in building high-performance teams. A

leader can have team-members’ commitments be clear an accepted by

defining clear goals, creating paths to accomplishing the goals, building trust

and getting the right people involved. Leader acts in an important role in

discussing the individuals’ roles and making sure they are understood.

Due to talk of roles being present in the results chapter, the three categories

briefly defined by Gentner (2010) are:

Role Clarity, understanding your role;

Role Acceptance, accepting your role;

Role Performance, having the ability to fulfill your role.

As found by Summers et al. (2012.), increases in flux have a negative effect

on performance, however, the effect may not be so severe in terms of sports

teams. Another big difference between business and sports could be noticed

on motivation. The assumption Ling Lim (2012) highlighted was that extrinsic

factors ensure employee’ satisfaction and intrinsic factors are to stimulate

performance. Roughly, this could be considered to be the other way around

for sports, although intrinsic motivation does not mean the player is satisfied

but without it, a player most likely could not play at a professional level.

Millenials, or Generation Y, is a big puzzle in the corporate world at the

moment and has also been a present theme in sports for a long time already.

Professional athletes who are active with their careers now in 2015, mostly fall

on the category of being part of Generation Y. According to Pollak (2015) 50%

of the employee population will be millenials. She stressed to invest in

leadership succession plans due to the high interest of being a leader within

the Gen Y. Millenials love variety in environment and are comfortable with

change, they expect fast results and work very well in teams (Hanson 2015).

Inevitably, this brings about new challenges both in business and sports but

also a lot of opportunities. Businesses could use sports in terms of learning

about the current and future generations and sports teams often rely on team

captains who may well be aspiring leaders belonging to Gen Y.

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5 RESEARCH RESULTS

According to Jorma Kananen (2011, 137),

In the research results the researcher presents the issues found

in the research material and how they answer the research

questions and provide a solution to the research problem. The

answers must be justified properly and presented systematically.

Results chapter is where the researcher may include such tables and graphs

that support and illustrate his findings. The chapter is also where verbatim

quotes from the interviews can be included. It can also include sections of

narrative account, which can be a powerful way to convey the richness of the

existing data. It counts as the qualitative equivalent of tables and graphs.

(Saunders 2009.)

The research objectives were to investigate what some of the characteristics

are that allow a team to be a high-performance team and to learn what people

involved in ice hockey define a dream team.

5.1 What are some of the factors that can help a team grow into a high-performance team?

This first research question is set out to be answered in sections for the

convenience of the reader. The sections start by explaining the results from

the interviews and then concluding the section into what can help in building a

high-performance team.

In short, factors that contribute to the building of a high-performance teams, and that we can draw examples from, are: team-building through

values, leadership, proper goal-setting, finding the right way to motivate and

sufficient communication

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Team and individuals

As it was apparent in the theoretical part of the research, it is crucial for

managers and the individuals to understand the true meaning of a team

(Katzenbach & Smith 1993). In turn, the head coach of JYP-Academy, Jukka

Ahvenjärvi, expressed he’s thought on how important for the team it is to have

a clear view and understanding of the organization, and its vision, they work

for. But he also talked about the importance of making clear the vision of the

team, what they are moving towards as a team and also as individuals.

The most important thing to stress, according to Ahvenjärvi, is to establish

common values for the team. He sees the establishment and following the set

values as being crucial since there are players from different age groups and

variety in the line-ups. It is important that every one of the players commits to

the values they have set as a team. The values help in vocalizing problems

and creating an atmosphere where they are resolvable. This leads to creating

a set of rules to follow and specific norms for the team. The the most

important element of establishing all of this is the fact that the members of the

team have jointly come together to set the values, make the rules and so

create the norms.

Ahvenjärvi listed three structural steps that are gone through within the team

with the individuals in order to perform and win. Even though they work

together as a team, everyone has different strengths and weaknesses that

need to be developed. The three steps are as follows:

Teaching

Coach’s job in the beginning is to teach. The player has to be

willing to learn and listen, he has to have courage to try things,

and be willing to put himself out there. He has to question things

and to be present physically and mentally. Everything together

builds up the confidence, which will transfer into performance.

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Practice and training

After teaching/learning the next step is practice. He will be trained

and he will train and practice independently as well. There has to

be 24h commitment into what is necessary as being an athlete

consists of more than just training for a certain amount of hours in

a day. Again, it is about building confidence and ability and for

that the player has to have courage and willingness to challenge

himself, break through personal boundaries and exit the comfort

zone. After the player establishes the building and improving his

confidence through previous, the next step can be taken.

Demanding

After building the base, the coaches can start to demand for

performance. Player has to win, deliver and show persistency in

his doings. He has to be able to function and commit each day

and is therefore ‘demanded’ on daily basis. Through work,

persistency and, so to say, stable performance, the player gains

more confidence in his ability.

When it comes to Media M1 (M1), there was not a structure according to

which the teams for specific projects would be built upon, other than the

skillset needed to meet the demands of the projects. Aartolahti stressed a few

times that everything starts with the client and the client’s needs and wants. At

M1, they aim to somehow include the person who has acted in a significant

role in order to get the customer on board. If not possible to physically include

that specific person, a lot of times an individual with a similar mindset or

attitude is put in the team. Aartolahti mentioned that sometimes building the

teams does not work in the ideal way and there has to be some balancing

done and people included according to their work situation. This is an

interesting fact that might happen in other organizations as well that the right

person for the team is not included due to him or her not having time for the

project.

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To conclude the first section, team and individuals, and to give the first tool

in building a high-performance team is essentially for the manager or team

leader to understand the true meaning of a team and to communicate it to the

other members. The leader has to convey the message of the organization, its

vision and its goals. This will help in getting the team on board mentally and

moving to the right direction in general. A team leader or manager should lead

the team members into establishing common values, rules and norms, which

may help in vocalizing problems and creating an atmosphere of trust and

mutual respect and makes it easier to resolve problems as also for a new

person possibly to join the team later on. A vital part of team’s successful

functioning is the team-members competency. Therefore, a smart manager

considers people for their existing skills but should also consider their potential

to improve existing skills and learn new ones when choosing team-members.

Leadership

Jukka Ahvenjärvi said a coach to be the red thread for the team. He explained

coach to first of all give guidelines on how to start with the team and provide

the means for it to function to begin with. In other words, he has to find the

right players for the right roles. Leader’s role is to orchestrate and if he sees

roles not being carried out how they are supposed to, he has to find a way to

do that by changing something in the game or by conversations. Leader is

there for players to trust especially in high-pressure and high-stress situations

that come about constantly throughout the season. A leader becomes a big

part of those situations so that the atmosphere of the team stays positive

despite the high levels of stress and pressure. JYP-Academy also has a set of

captains that the coach lets the team choose. They have a role in leading and

inspiring the team forward as well.

Eric Perrin who was a captain of JYP for three years said being a captain

meant a great challenge as well as a huge responsibility. He spoke about the

pressure of not letting a successful team start sliding and moving to the wrong

direction and having a big role in getting other upbeat and not let them have

negative attitudes or develop bad habits. He said it is a continuous work to be

40

a captain and one has to be observant, ready and active. A captain also has a

role in teaching, inspiring and motivating. Perrin said he has wanted to affect

people in a positive way and has felt very responsible on keeping the team at

a high level. In turn, Aartolahti put emphasis on a leader as someone to

orchestrate the work, to make sure everyone contributes and gets to say what

they might have on their minds.

That being said, leadership is necessary. As heard from Perrin, a captain has

to get the players inspired even on a bad day and the bigger the team the

tougher it is. Corporate teams tend to be smaller and one leader sometimes

works much better than a few but the amount of leaders and, better said,

motivators should be assessed also depending on the size of the team.

Aartolahti and Ahvenjärvi talked more about the role of someone coordinate

and keeping the strings in their hands, so to say. Teams should always have a

competent leader who is passionate and who truly wants the team to succeed,

that way it is easier for the team to be on board and moving to the right

direction.

Goal-setting

Setting the goals in JYP-Academy, both for the team and the players,

happens through a similar structure. The way Ahvenjärvi has established this,

is quite identical on what theory has to say about goals and the importance of

them. The goals are set into smaller entities as in process goals and daily

activities will be determined in order to help the achievement of whatever has

been decided for both the team and the individual. The importance of process

goals was talked about in the theory section referring to Katzenbach and

Smith (1993).

Firstly, there will be conversations to determine what the big goal and vision

for the team or individual is. The big goals will be set accordingly. Since the

goals have to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based, the

next step is to slice the big time-consuming goals up, getting into NHL for

example, into smaller entities to be able to keep the focus, make them more

realistic and to make the tracking of them possible. This allows the setting of

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process goals and the determination of what has to be done on daily basis.

Also possible corrective actions could be taken if during a time-section it looks

like the team is falling behind on their vision.

For the season 2014-2015 JYP-Academy established their goals, divided

them into sections, set process goals and set ways to measure them. The

measurement of the progress happens frequently and communication

between players and the coaches is a daily practice. When asked about

assessment meetings, Ahvenjärvi said that they have three to six longer

meetings per year with each player that usually last a minimum one-hour.

Daily meetings on specific things are a common practice whether it is to go

through offense, a specific play or to analyze something else together.

For M1, the goals are mostly set in regards to clients’ needs and then, if

possible, the team-members are chosen due to characteristic elements.

In conclusion for how motivation could be of help in building a high-

performance team, there should be a big collective goal set as a team or by

management. Katzenbach and Smith (1993) remind that there needs to be

room to shape the goal so that it becomes meaningful for the team. Also, as

theory and practice show, the big goals should be sliced up so that smaller

performance goals, which can be assessed during the process, make

accomplishing the big ones realistic and possible.

Motivation

Players live from the intrinsic motivation, the one coming from inside. Intrinsic

motivation is hard to take away but die to it being so crucial to a player’s

development and performance there were some questions dealt with it also.

Notes on motivation that could be taken from the interviews of the two players

were that intrinsic motivation was kept up by pride, wanting to do better on

daily basis and to be able to have a long career. Pride was something very

strongly about and appeared that he does not want to let himself down nor

people following him. Negative attributes to inner motivation were said to be

injuries that may even get the player depressed. Pride was mentioned again

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but the interviewee explained this by him being negatively affected if someone

else loses confidence in him.

The coach agreed with intrinsic motivation being the key and said that with

only extrinsic motivation a player cannot do pretty much anything when it

comes to ice hockey as a professional career. Aartolahti agreed on the

necessity of inner motivation, but as mentioned in the theory section, in

corporate world extrinsic motivation is usually the key and performance is

enhanced by intrinsic factors.

In conclusion for motivation, both coaches and managers should seek

people with intrinsic, inner, motivation. Although, in companies, it has to be

made sure that employees are satisfied with the extrinsic factors (salary e.g.)

first. Intrinsic motivation is vital for best possible performance for both

business and sports and could be described as passion.

Communication

Tuomo Aartolahti (M1) concluded that the best team he ever worked in

communicated seamlessly. They talked about everything and all the

information was shared so that there was constant flow in communication. It

was not only formal ways of reaching one another but a friendship type of

thing when they called each other for the smallest of updates on the project.

Smaller in the interviews but highly stressed in the theoretical framework,

communication is a key element in the success of teams and should be

placed high in importance between team-members but also between teams

and management.

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5.2 Can a high-performance team remain on its performance level even if team-members change?

Ice hockey view

Perrin describes the change of line-ups and players distractions that you have

to learn to go with. He explains this buy having to help both players affected

by the changes: you have to be supportive to the one that comes in and the

one that has been taken out has to be kept motivated. He continues by saying

that changes like that can affect the team chemistry and can become a

problem. With injuries though, the changes are even more logical and

necessary. Focusing on individual responsibilities is something Perrin found

crucially important to learn in order to manage those distractions within the

line-ups. When asked about whether it is hard to handle a possibly

inexperience17-year-old player being included in the line-up all of the sudden,

and whether it is visible in the game, he said: “No, the thing about hockey

players, once we get on the ice, everything is out of your mind for those

things.” He continued with: “I know who I’m playing with, I know what I have to

do, I know who I’m playing with against and everything’s clear.”

Summing up findings from all the interviews, it seems the fact that hockey

team is build upon a big number of individuals helps when dealt with the

changes in the line-ups. There are so many people creating the team structure

with a clear vision of what the goals are that changes to the line-ups do not

really affect the team. However, changes done with very little warning time,

might affect the individual performance and therefore quick changes might not

be the best for the team’s benefit. That being said, there are still 20 other

players in the team and even if one failed to prepare for a night’s game, the

team’s performance does not rely on that. It came to realization that there are

two sides to everything: when taken a young player who wants to perform well

is given a chance to play on a higher level, even if it is a five-minute warning, it

may be a good thing that the player has not had too much time to think about

it and that results him being less nervous, but then on the other hand, if a

player has prepared to play at a home game and is then told to pack up his

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gear and leave to go play in a another city that night, that may be a problem.

These issues have a lot to do with a person’s character and therefore there is

a big variance on how players deal with given circumstances.

It was apparent a lot of work from the players has to be realized in order to

deal with these type of changes: older players have to give the younger ones

the room to make errors and be patient with them since they are only starting

out. Communication and talking about the occurring situations was also

stressed in order to maintain the intensity and keep the game rolling. These

findings go together with what the earlier discussed theory had to say about

disruptions, more energy going into coordinating and reorganizing. In sports

though, with a bigger team, the flux in coordination may be so short-termed

that it actually might not affect the performance in whole as much as it would

for a smaller team or for a corporate team. The players are usually not shaken

if line-ups change due to it not being an uncommon event. So the answer to this question, in terms of a hockey team, is a yes: a high-performance team

can maintain its performance even if team members change. Logically, if no

communication exists or if team-members actively try to make the situation not

work for the team, the performance could not be maintained. However, JYP-

Academy had a lot of changes in their line-ups, planned and unplanned,

during its season and the team still managed to accomplish the big goal set in

the beginning of the season. Due to this, it could be said that the positive

answer was also proven in practice since the team-member changes did not

come in the way of moving towards the goals successfully.

Corporate view

The M1 CEO explained that even though their teams change at least a little bit

it usually is not much of an issue because people know each other and most

likely have worked together previously on a different project. Theory

(Summers et al. 2012) was very clear about significant effects in team’s

functioning when there are disruptive events such as team-member change.

Most likely, the team will be able to maintain its performance if a member is

changed from a less of a core role and there is constant communication at

45

times of the change. If someone from a core role changes without there being

sufficient flow of information, the team’s performance is likely to drop at least

for the time being and until the new team can establish a new way of

coordinating its work.

Factors that may help the situations are if the person stepping in is known to

rest of the team, if there are values that have been established when forming

the team and if the team leader can be very effective in communication and

clear about the situation. Due to high-performance teams relying much on

leadership and communication, it would seem logical that a leader who has

already managed such performance within a team could also handle a team-

member change by performing the stages, which take place when the team is

being built for the first time. High-performance has an element of collective

goals and working in unison and therefore a team like that would most likely

naturally work a bit harder into getting on track as fast as possible.

However, biggest problem we could address is the leader changing. A leader

can handle a member change and have everyone on board but if the leader

himself changes and someone who does not possess the same ideology or

practices is brought to fill in his position, it may end in chaos within the team.

Another factor that could completely cut the flow is if a person comes in to fill a

core role and is incompetent. As mentioned earlier, a team needs a set of

skills and no matter how much the performance relies on leadership, a leader

cannot establish an atmosphere of trust and confidence if it is known that

someone does not know how to do the required.

Having discussed both sides, the answer to the research question from corporate perspective is yes and no:

A team is likely to maintain its performance under the conditions of the

team leader taking the initiative to re-coordinate and assure that

communication stays fluent, team leader going back to the basics and go over

what the team has established and decided so far. The new member should

be also introduced and he should be open about his work experience, for

example, because it has a role in building the trust and confidence in the new

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person’s competence. Maintaining the performance requires work and

although a yes to the question could be logically reasoned, it is still

hypothetical. Apparent in the interview with Aartolahti, teams working in M1

have been successful even though they tend to be reassembled for every new

project.

A team is unlikely to maintain its performance if the leader of the group

changes, if a member of the team changes from a core role and the new

person is either incompetent or has a different way of working altogether, if the

leader fails to establish fluent communication during the time of the change or

if the rest of the team refuses to cooperate (highly unlikely within a high-

performance team but still possible). Whether the answer is positive or

negative, it depends a lot on how well established the team is and the

circumstances under which the change happens. Also as noted in the

perspective of ice hockey, the team size acts as a factor as well. The smaller

the team, the bigger the impact because the roles are set out to be more of

core roles for everyone.

5.3 Defining a dream team

Eric Perrin said he had been in a dream team when JYP won the

championship in 2012. The team had ben going through a rough time with

everyone overthinking, wanting good money and better contracts. The team

sat down to talk the situation through and come into conclusion of having to

work together as a team to accomplish the team’s goals first and then through

that get everyone’s personal goals accomplished as well. Another interviewee

said that when a team does well, the individuals are more visible and the

personal goals tend to be accomplished when the ones of the team do. Perrin

stressed role clarity by explaining there had been 4th line guys who thought

they could be 3rd line anywhere else in the team, which led them to not accept

their roles. He also said it is about going all the way with small things that are

crucial: sacrificing yourself physically in the game and doing things all the way.

He said they had skills and people who worked hard that season. “That’s my

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dream team: where everybody accepts their roles and everybody does it with

pride.”

Jukka Ahvenjärvi, the head coach of JYP-Academy said a dream team is a

team that has been built so that every team-member has a clear

understanding of what their role is and the player can perform that role feeling

like he is being trusted. He said through trust a player can give his all. Other

participants spoke about the team having to work in unison with all the roles

filled by the best possible people. The former player of JYP-Academy was

clear with his opinion by saying the team needs to be more important than any

individual.

5.4 Generation Y

The CEO of M1 mentioned having noticed differences between people but

was unsure whether those differences actually had to do with age or if it was

due to years of experience in the work life. He said there are individuals who

are orientated differently (task/result-orientated) but could not draw

conclusions based on age and task-orientation, for example, for not being

aware of everyone’s ages. In other words, the main theme of the coffee

breaks discussions has not been to talk about how old everyone is. However,

the generation theme got Aartolahti’s attention and he felt it would be an

interesting thing to look into.

Furthermore, he said having noticed also some employees possessing

different mindsets towards work. Work is maybe not as important and people

have interests towards exploring their options and seeing if they can further

develop and study more. They are not necessarily in a steady stage in their

lives and it has become evident that changes in the work, workloads and

environment are not an issue. He also mentioned younger individuals being

very confident in their abilities and he said that some toning down was

necessary at times. These people get excited fast and are not afraid of trying

new things. Young employees have found doing work from distance an

element in the work that is very attractive. Again, Aartolahti stressed the fact

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that he cannot be sure whether these observations are something dependent

on the generation or the years of experience. It is hard to tie Aartolahti’s

experiences into the theory reliably but in the case of these above-mentioned

characteristics belonging to the millenials of the company; they are well in

accordance to what Hanson (2015) and EY (2015) said about millenials’

characteristics and preferences.

Even though not verbally expressed, it seems that Ahvenjärvi is intentionally

or unintentionally taking into consideration the characteristics of the

Generation Y in his coaching style. A possible advantage for him has been the

fact that all of JYP-Academy’s players were born in the 90s so even the

differences within Gen Y are not likely to be present in the team’s players.

Referring to Table 1 in the beginning of the thesis, out of the six teams whose

ages were featured on the table, four had players that were born in three

different decades, and one had players born in the 80s and 90s. The coach

described his coaching style to be task-orientated however; Gen Y is

described to prefer results-orientation. Although, the context to which task-

orientation was related was about teaching the game and talking about

individual roles within it so the conflicting styles may not have much

importance here.

When asked about whether or not Ahvenjärvi feels that his coaching style has

changed or developed throughout the years, he answered by saying that he

used to be very authoritarian in coaching and said this to be because he had

to coach players in the same age group to which he belonged to. He did not

change the term to describe his coaching style but mentioned that the sport

has developed to a direction where one cannot make the decisions without

talking about them but still there are times when tough calls have to be made

and in the end, it is the head coach who stands behind them. This interferes a

bit with what theory said about Generation Y. Hanson (2015) explained Gen Y

athletes are independent thinkers they might not like to be told what to do by

authority figures. However, Ahvenjärvi says he feels his strengths are that he

can read the players by their body language and knows when to listen. This

probably balances the equation out to the extent where problems would not

49

arise even if players did not necessarily like authority. Another point to be

made is that in the circumstances of ice hockey, players tend to know why

they are told to do things and how it benefits the team and them individually.

Conscious or subconscious, it looks like the head coach of JYP-Academy has

a coaching style to which the players respond to and it may be because the

elements that get the millenials ticked off are balanced by elements of how

they like to be treated.

6 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Kananen (2011, 66-67) explains reliability and validity by stating that

Reliability refers to the consistency and repeatability of the

measurement and the research results, i.e. if the research is

repeated, the results will be the same. Validity refers to whether

your thesis answers the questions it is intended to answer, i.e.

have you reached the right things.

Every participant has their own view and their own angle from where to look at

occurring situations and possible issues. The answers cannot be the same

when talking about a professional player at his twenties and a head coach at

his fifties. This can be explained due to different positions in the team, a head

coach is likely to be far more educated in the field academically also, as was

the case with these interviews. However, similarities in the answers were

apparent and every interviewee mentioned role clarity at some point, for

example. Answers are reliable but they might end up being political, after all,

the research focuses on a team that is a part of an organization. The

members of that organization are also representatives of it and may not be

able to give as in-depth answers in regards to obstacles created and rules set

by the organization as they otherwise would. This was expected and therefore

the questions were created so that they could be generalized to hockey teams

and when there were specific JYP-Academy related questions, they were

structured so that the participants would not have to answer untruthfully even

if they were tied into the organization. When talking generally about the field

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and the views, opinions and the experiences of the participants, the answers

are reliable but always from the perspective of that person. It has to be

realized that varying opinions and ideologies exist but the participants were

also aware of this and many times used the phrases “in my opinion” or “from

my point of view” when answering a question.

It became clear that a lot of times, even though personalities vary a lot, the

people have similar kind of mindsets and even though generalizations cannot

be reliably made due to the small number of participants, the fundamental

principles are most likely very similar among team members. Most

professional players have been raised with hockey in their life from a very

young age on and so the importance of collective efforts as a team and certain

kind of sense of responsibility and work ethics are ingrained to them from a

young age on. Due to previous, even one person’s answers could give an idea

of how a big number of players or coaches would most likely see things.

Everything builds around certain concepts and collective goals towards which

everyone is working. If and when the statements and comments vary, there

are multiple reasons that could be in the background. They may vary due to

the participant’s background, cultural factors, age and on how tied into the

organization they are when answering questions about its functioning. These

are just examples and multiple other reasons may arise.

Interview with the coach revealed the mental and physical workload that the

athletes are exposed to as for the way the team works and those policies go

for all players so it is very unlikely anyone would differ vastly when asked key

questions about motivation, how important team spirit is and so forth.

Therefore, the biggest factor when questioning the reliability of the data

collected is if a player or coach feels obligated to answer a certain way

because of the organization they represent or have represented in the past.

However, this was not seen an issue due to the character of the questions.

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6.1 Reliability

The qualitative data collected was in accordance to the theory studied and

there were previous research results that could be tied into the opinions of the

participants. This happened especially with the interviews with Ahvenjärvi,

Aartolahti and Perrin. Ahvenjärvi had a lot of academic knowledge due to his

educational background and some of the terms he used and themes he talked

about to answer the questions could be identified in the theory studied for this

research. A lot of sources for the theory section were in accordance with one

another as well and many authors seemed to have similar kind of views. The

interviews were very consistent and there was a notable similarity in the

answers and even vocabulary used by the participants. Analysing the

transcriptions was relatively smooth due to same key words coming up for the

most parts of the interviews dealt with ice hockey especially. The participants’

way of answering questions was surprisingly consistent as well. Ahvenjärvi,

Aartolahti and Perrin were very thorough with their answers and told stories

and incidents to further explain the context and background to what they were

talking about.

Some findings in the interviews, e.g. goal setting and roles, forced into looking

for more theory base to see what previous studies had to say. The results

could be used for other situations as well and are not reliable only in regards

to JYP-Academy and Media M1. Teams are used all over and the results are

talked about on a general level “in sports” or “in business”. It is evident that not

every business and organization can, for example, build a team in the ideal

way but the results and suggestions work for both ideal situations and to make

the not-so-ideal situation work a little better for the teams that are being put

together.

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6.2 Validity

The research does answer the questions it is intended to and even though

there were only one sports team and one media company under inspection in

terms of teams, these results can be somewhat generalized if not fully, at least

partially. Factors in the results chapter above that help a team become

successful can be both applied to business and sports on teams no matter

what industry they work in. The issues of team-member changes are tackled

from two perspectives because there cannot be one answer for both business

and sports. However, the sports perspective applies to other sports teams and

the business perspective can be applied to number of businesses. We were

able to redefine the term dream team, which will come up in the conclusions

chapter. Also, the aim of tying business and sports together was

accomplished and the conclusions talk about how businesses could benefit

from sports teams in regards to future generations for example.

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7 CONCLUSIONS

The data collected was not solely focused on discussing the phenomenon of

under-performing teams but rather to try and understand what was the reason

for JYP-Academy succeeding in the season 2014-2015 and to see if we could

draw conclusions and new ideas from the interviews and theory that would

help in achieving the objectives of the research.

The dictionary perception of a dream team has been questioned throughout

this thesis and after hearing from professionals and reading through articles

about perceivably perfect (talent wise) teams failing, a new definition that

could be brought next to the one found on the dictionary would be this:

Dream team is a team of individuals who have confidence in one another,

have clear roles in the team and who, to their best ability, work together in

unison towards the team’s collective goals while developing as individuals.

Talent is important as well but as one of the greatest golfers of all time said:

“If you can’t outplay them, outwork them.”

– Ben Hogan (n.d.)

Success of a team in sports and business

Throughout players training, the emphasis is highly on confidence and being

able to perform on a maximal level. This happens through steps of teaching

the players, training them and trusting them to train independently when given

the tools to do that, after all of this is done and accomplished the coaches can

being to demand the players and team to deliver and to perform in order to

win. There is a huge issue in the world of business when companies fail to

take the risk of investing in training programs for young employees while still

demanding performance from them even though those demands should only

be made after those similar kind of steps have been taken as in sports when

54

building the performance of the individuals for them to be able to contribute in

the team’s success as much as possible.

Ahvenjärvi spoke about making sure that the employees or players have a

clear vision and understanding of what the organization’s, the one they are

working for, job is and what it aims to do. In this case for example, the players

have to understand that the organization’s duty is not only to make them

professionals but the success of the team has to be put first due to it being

crucial for the individual goals to be fulfilled as well. Ahvenjärvi himself

stressed the importance of clearing the vision for employees in a company as

well, not only in sports.

“This is where we are going together, this is your role in making it happen.“

That could be emphasized as the message that should be delivered and

vocalized to new employees whether it is in sports or business. When a

person is hired to be a part of a team without giving him a clear view of the

direction of where the team and company are headed as wholes, it will be very

difficult for that someone to become a part of the team and organization so

that they can successfully fulfill what is expected of him. Employers should be

clear about their expectations.

It is clear that when an ice hockey team starts their season, they will do more

than a regular team within a company in order to build unity and to gain

common perspective. This due to the fact that their working environment is

solely within a team and the individual effort is not only for the benefit of

himself, but also that of the team. Something very crucial for a hockey team to

start off right is to build the team based on the individuals’ values, through

which they want to function as a team. When values and rules are established

in whole, everyone has to live by them and they will respect them. The

interview with Aartolahti revealed that their company does not use this type of

approach when teams start working together nor has the company had a “sit-

down” about it on a bigger level. Especially with longer projects with several

people involved, it could be beneficiary for teams in companies to establish

the common grounds and when values and rules are established together, it is

55

much easier to work together in a long run and respect what has been

decided in the beginning. This could also help when having to change a

member of the team due to whatever reason. The new person could so be

introduced to the bases on which the team has been build upon, bring in their

own ideas to possibly update the previously set values, and therefore it could

help the process of getting the team back on track after a replacement of a

member.

When it comes to team building in practice, sports teams are in a situation that

is often unrealistic for companies’ teams. When building sports teams, there is

usually a process of choosing the desired set of players, under some

restrictions of course but they will be available for that one specific project so

to say. Companies cannot always build their teams based on exactly the ideal

people due to the employees working often on multiple projects and therefore

they cannot take on another one. Due to this, it is even more crucial to have a

structure to follow when putting together a team also within companies. By

accomplishing a structural value-based way of team building, the team could

be more likely to succeed even if those individuals would not have been

chosen to work together in an ideal situation.

Motivation and goals

After all the interviews and theory, as a personal opinion, motivation is

something that could set corporate world and sports far apart. Intrinsic

motivation can stimulate an employee to perform better as mentioned earlier

but it is not crucial as there can be cases where an individual functions purely

on extrinsic motivation to get done what is required from him. Sports do not

work the same way. Having conducted the interviews and spoken with

professionals in the field, it seems that without intrinsic motivation, a

professional career in ice hockey for example would be merely impossible.

The players spend 24 hours in a day on their careers. From everything they

put into their bodies nutrition wise to how much sleep they get at night affect

the players’ performance. They have dietary guidelines and fitness plans to

56

get them to develop physically and they have to be mentally fit, too. As

Ahvenjärvi, the head coach of JYP-Academy, said: “It isn’t enough that a

player shows up for the morning practice at the rink, they have to be mentally

present as well.”

Part of all aspects of teamwork is communication. It became clear that JYP-

Academy invests a great amount of time in setting, assessing and completing

goals. Big part of that is individual assessment and meetings with the players.

The coach says communication between coaches and players happens daily

and smaller meeting take place frequently. Three to six meetings a year with

20 people for a minimum hour is a big time invested in individual assessment

and communication. Companies use discussions as well but the frequency of

those could be re-evaluated and more time maybe invested in them.

Communication between team-members is crucial and ultimately the first thing

to solve, but the theoretical framework of this research also stressed the

importance of an open culture and information flow between management and

teams.

The business example gave off an impression that the intrinsic motivation is

extremely important in the media company as well but is was not as highly

stressed and the aim of that motivation was more on creativity and

persistence rather than on organizing one’s life in whole to be able to do their

job. A very important matter is also that in business extrinsic motivation comes

first and intrinsic motivation is to support the performance and possibly

improve it.

Something found extremely interesting in the relation of these two motivational

categories is that when in corporate life extrinsic factors are vital, in sports

they can come in the way of success if not laid out correctly. As resulted in the

conversation with Eric Perrin during the season 2011-2012 playing in JYP,

there was an issue with the fact that players’ eyes were on big contracts and

individual extrinsic goals. It was not until the team sat down and agreed on

that the only way to get everyone those big contracts, extrinsic goals, the team

had to look good in whole and focus on accomplishing the team’s goals and

57

do that through intrinsic motivation guiding the way. Those goals that provide

extrinsic motivation could be achieved through teamwork and collective goals

but everyone would have to work for them in unison. The team ended up

winning the Finnish Championship and getting through those rough paths

together putting the teams’ goals first as a whole.

Generations Y, Z and Z* – business and sports

Some like to think that members of the Generation Z are born between the

mid 90s and the year 2000, and some consider the generation starts after the

year 2000. Regardless of what the agreed term for those individuals born in

2000 and after is, they have been and are growing up to a completely different

environment than anyone born around the mid 90s.

To make the idea of this chapter easier to follow let’s make temporary

unofficial definitions as follows:

Generation X (Gen X) born between 1960-1980

Generation Y (Gen Y) born between 1980-1995

Generation Z (Gen Z) born between 1995-2000

Generation Z* (Gen Z*) born after the year 2000

Companies are already struggling with Generation Y (=millenials) but it is

obvious that Generation Z will be even more of a challenge. By 2020, 50% of

the working population will be millenials but by that time sports will already

have a steady base of players from Gen Z on a professional level.

Since the Generations Z and Z* are bound to bring about even more puzzling

than Gen Y that is being dealt with right now (Levit 2015), and since it looks

like teamwork is not going to disappear anytime soon, it could be beneficial for

corporate experts to look into and do research on what the challenges are that

coaches face with our currently (two) youngest generation(s) and how to

prepare for 2025 when they are entering the workforce while there are still

58

Generation X professionals on the field. This could be done especially looking

into teamwork and how the individuals respond to authorities.

JYP-Academy is dealing with bunch of players that belong to the Generation Z

and at the same time, most of JYP Juniors are born after the year 2000. JYP-

Academy and JYP will be dealing with Generation Z* within five years or less

and if observations from these players start to be communicated further

already at this point, JYP can prepare as an organization to be a step ahead

when it comes to coaching a new generation also in the future. Pollak (2015)

said 73% of the surveyed millenials wanted to become leaders and many of

them already considered to be one. Sports teams place an enormous

importance on team captains and since it is likely that many players of the

Gen Y are interested in leading and impacting their teams though leadership,

sports and business could work together in building the leadership skills of

young players. This way, if or when, the player enters the work life, their skills

in leading teams within corporates could be taken advantage of. Businesses

need people who possess leadership skills because, as discussed earlier,

high-performance teams rise and fall on leadership.

Generation Z is being described to be very ‘me’ focused and will want things

to be personalized for them, they need to be engaged in a new way and

appreciate visuals for example (Schneider 2015). Cooperation with teachers

could be a great way in order to gain insight on how to prepare for the coming

of the new generations in corporate world and in sports.

59

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APPENDICES

Appendix 1. Interview Jukka Ahvenjärvi

SEMI STRUCTURED INTERVIEW – THEMES TO FOLLOW TAUSTA - VALMENTAJA

Valmentajan tausta? Koulutus? Valmennustyyli? Vahvuudet? Oma käsitys Dream Teamista terminä?

JOUKKUEEN RAKENTAMINEN Miten tiimiä lähdetään rakentamaan? Ensiaskeleet.. Kuka on ensimmäinen jota harkitaan, mitä jos joku kieltäytyy?

Miten kapteeni valitaan? Onko tiimillä käytössä urheilupsykologi?

TIIMIN MUODOSTUMINEN

Mitä tehdään jotta joukkue ei ole vain joukko ihmisiä ryhmässä vaan heistä saadaan muodostettua tiimi?

Kuinka suuri osa valmentaja on tiimihenkeä? Minkälaisia tavoitteita asetetaan joukkueena? Miten johtajana koittaa pitää huolen siitä että pelaajat ei tee vaan ns. tarvittavaa määrä töitä vaan vie itseään pois sieltä mukavuusalueelta?

MOTIVOINTI

Extrnsic/Intrinsic Motivation - Ulkopuolinen motivaatio, koitetaanko pelaajaa motivoida vai luotetaanko siihen että sisäinen motivaatio löytyy Sarja 3-1, miten saada pelaajat uskomaan vielä voittoon

MUUTTUJAT Nopeat kokoonpanojen muutokset Loukkaantumiset Takaisin peleihin

64

Role clarity? Pysyykö oma rooli selkeänä YKSILÖT

Kuinka paljon yksilön omat tavoitteet ja ura painavat?

65

Appendix 2. Interview Tuomo Aartolahti

SEMI STRUCTURED INTERVIEW – THEMES TO FOLLOW Tuomo Aartolahti M1 TAUSTA

Tausta? Koulutus? Johtamistyyli? Vahvuudet? Oma käsitys Dream Teamista terminä?

TIIMIN RAKENTAMINEN Miten tiimiä lähdetään rakentamaan? Ensiaskeleet..

Projektilähtöinen? Miten tiimi valitaan tiettyä projektia varten? Kuka on ensimmäinen jota harkitaan?

- Miten tiiminjohtaja valitaan? TIIMIN MUODOSTUMINEN

Mitä tehdään jotta työryhmä ei ole vain joukko ihmisiä ryhmässä vaan heistä saadaan muodostettua tiimi?

Kuinka suuri osa TJ on tiimihenkeä?

Urheilujoukkue asettaa yhteiset arvot, tavoitteet ja säännöt kauden alussa. Onko yrityksessä toimivilla tiimeillä tarvetta samanlaiseen käytäntöön projektien alussa? Puututaanko tiimeihin kesken projektin tarvittaessa, kuinka ongelmat nousevat esille, pyrkiikö tiimi yksin ratkaisemaan hiertymäkohdat vai otetaanko mukaan ns. sovittelija

MOTIVOINTI

Extrnsic/Intrinsic Motivation - Ulkopuolinen motivaatio, koitetaanko työntekijää motivoida vai luotetaanko siihen että sisäinen motivaatio löytyy Miten johtajana koittaa pitää huolen siitä että projektilaiset ei tee vaan ns. tarvittavaa määrä töitä vaan vie itseään pois

66

mukavuusalueelta? Pyritään varmistamaan uudet luovat ratkaisut eikä pitäytyä ns. turvallisissa rimaa hipovissa ratkaisuissa. 20/80.

MUUTTUJAT

Tutkimusten mukaan pienet tiimit, jotka pysyvät ja toimivat yhdessä pitkään koetaan suoriutuvan parhaiten tuloksellisesti, kuinka tuloksellisuus pyritään säilyttämään kun sama tiimi ei ole koossa kaikkia projekteja varten?

Role clarity? Pysyykö oma rooli selkeänä YKSILÖT

Kuinka paljon yksilön omat tavoitteet ja ura painavat? Palkatessa uusia työntekijöitä, kuinka pyritään varmistamaan henkilökemiat etukäteen ammattitaidon lisäksi?

67

Appendix 3. Interview Member of the Organization

SEMI STRUCTURED INTERVIEW – THEMES TO FOLLOW SPORT – ORGANIZATION TAUSTA

Rooli organisaatiossa? Oma käsitys Dream Teamista terminä?

JOUKKUEEN RAKENTAMINEN

Näkyykö valmennustiimissä se, että pelaajien valintaa ei voi organisaation lainalaisuuksien vuoksi rakentaa täysin mielen mukaan?

TIIMIN MUODOSTUMINEN

Minkälaisia ongelmakohtia tiimin muodostumisessa näkyy ulospäin vai meneekö usein mutkattomasti? Minkälaisia ulospäin näkyviä ongelmia kauden edetessä mahdollisesti esiintyy?

MOTIVOINTI

Kuinka suuressa roolissa joukkueen johto ja valmennus näyttäytyvät pelaajan motivaation osalta, negatiivinen/positiivinen

MUUTTUJAT

Nopeat kokoonpanojen muutokset – ulkoiset vaikutukset pelaajiin - Esim. Loukkaantumiset, pelaajien nostot ja akatemiaan tulevat

YKSILÖT

Kuinka paljon yksilön omat tavoitteet ja ura painavat? Kuinka paljon näitä kunnioitetaan?

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Appendix 4. Interview Professional Ice Hockey Player

Team member perspective Määrittele ’Dream Team’ ? MOTIVATION • Mikä on suurin tekijä joka vaikuttaa omaan sisäiseen motivaatioon? Negatiivinen/positiivinen

• Mikä on suurin haaste omien henkilökohtaisten tavoitteiden ja joukkueen tavoitteiden yhdistämisessä? Vai onko haasteita tässä ollenkaan?

TEAM-BUILDING • Minkälaisia ongelmakohtia tiimin muodostumisessa näkyy vai meneekö usein helposti?

• Miten pelipaikoista kilpaileminen vaikuttaa ryhmähenkeen?

TEAM MEMBER CHANGES • Miten nopeat kokoonpanomuutokset vaikuttaa oman roolin selkeyteen, ryhmähenkeen ja motivaatioon?

(Esim. loukkaantumiset tai jos liigasta tulee pelaaja akatemiaan tai toisinpäin: jos akatemiasta nostetaan liigaan)

69

Appendix 5. Interview Eric Perrin

Team member perspective Eric Perrin

Background info.. ?

TEAM-BUILDING

Which are the possible challenges that arise when building the team – as in turning a group of people into a well-functioning high-performance team?

Small teams that have worked together for a long time…

How to make a high-performance team when there are a lot of individuals and the people aren’t familiar with one another?

TEAM MEMBER CHANGES

How do quick team member changes affect the role clarity, team spirit and motivation?

For example: A player getting injured or when a player from Jyp-Academy is suddenly included in the night’s game or vice versa.

Is there a way to make this easier by effective communication for example

MOTIVATION

How does the competition for the spots affect the team spirit and motivation of the individuals?

What is the most important factor affecting the intrinsic motivation? Positive and Negative?

What is the biggest challenge in combining the personal career goals with the goals of the team? Are there any?

How responsible do you feel as a captain when it comes to motivating a team to perform on a high level?

Define a ‘Dream Team’?

70

Appendix 6. Table of Mestis Players Ages

JYP$Akatemia Hokki Tuto Leki Jukurit KooKooAge$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

(year$born)Age$$$$$$$

(year$born)Age$$$$$$$

(year$born)Age$$$$$$$$

(year$born)Age$$$$$$$$$$$

(year$born)Age$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

(year$born)1990 1984 1977 1979 1979 19781991 1989 1984 1985 1983 19801991 1989 1984 1988 1983 19811991 1990 1986 1988 1983 19811992 1991 1989 1988 1985 19851992 1991 1989 1988 1986 19861992 1991 1989 1989 1988 19861993 1992 1989 1989 1988 19861993 1992 1990 1990 1988 19871993 1992 1990 1991 1988 19871993 1992 1990 1991 1988 19871993 1992 1991 1992 1989 19881993 1992 1991 1992 1989 19881993 1993 1992 1992 1990 19891993 1993 1993 1992 1991 19901993 1993 1993 1992 1991 19901993 1993 1993 1993 1991 19911994 1993 1993 1993 1991 19921994 1993 1993 1993 1992 19921994 1993 1993 1994 1992 19921994 1993 1994 1994 1992 19931994 1994 1994 1994 1992 19941994 1994 1994 1994 1993 19951994 1994 1995 1995 1993 19971994 1994 1996 1995 1993 19971994 1994 19941995 1996 19951995 1996 19951996 1996 19951996 19951997

1993,4 1992,4 1990,5 1990,8 1989,7 1988,5